Trump, Biden acknowledge Georgia is 'key' to White House ahead of Tuesday primary
ATLANTA - Georgia, it's almost our turn. This Tuesday, voters will head to the polls for this year's presidential preference primary.
WATCH: TRUMP HOSTS LAKEN RILEY'S FAMILY AT ROME RALLY, BIDEN INTERRUPTED BY PROTESTER IN ATLANTA
Both presidential forerunners, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, acknowledge the Peach State is key in who is voted into the Oval Office.
Georgia has been taking the national stage by storm leading up to the 2024 presidential election between the recent Biden and Trump campaign rallies, the election interference RICO trial against Trump and his associates in Fulton County, to the motions to remove District Attorney Fani Willis from his case.
"This whole witch hunt should be put out of its misery and dismissed immediately," Trump said at his GOP rally in Rome on Saturday.
The killing of 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student Laken Hope Riley on UGA's campus has also taken center stage. Eyes from around the country have been on Georgia, wondering if Athens is considered a sanctuary city and how the topic of illegal immigration would play out for both candidates.
Riley's accused killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was confirmed to have entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.
"Laken Riley would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the boarders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals," Trump said.
President Biden addressed Riley's case during his State of Union Address on Thursday, but did not during Saturday's campaign rally at Pullman Yards. He did, however, speak about his efforts at the southern border.
"I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure our border, provide a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and their families, farmworkers, essential workers…," he said.
FOX 5 spoke to Andra Gillespie, a political scientist from Emory University, about the efforts to get people out to the polls.
"Those get out the vote mobilization efforts start now as evidence by the fact they were both in the state over the weekend to try to rile up support and try to get people who are actually going to do the hard work knocking on doors and making phone calls for people excited about doing that job for the next eight months," Gillespie said.
"The presidential race is the top ticket race all of the time. That's the one race that people learned in civics class you were supposed to vote in," she said. "And we see lower voter participation in midterm elections. We see lower participation in off-cycle elections for state and local offices that are held in odd-numbered years."